FTL: Limited Information (Federation Victory!)

[Iconeum]

Sorry for the rule violation there, cfj.

@Varsoon, I'll be needing moar power :p

[callforjudgement]

Let me know when you're ready to move on.

[the worst]

Ready whenever the others are.

[Gammagooey]

yeah I'm ready to head out

varsoon get da powah and let's go

[Varsoon]

Imma need scrap to do that.

[callforjudgement]

Jump 89

Internal border (n)

. The line dividing two sectors within a single territory. Internal borders are often created due to large amounts of space which are not interesting enough to be worth placing beacons in – a long-range beacon often makes more sense than planting a large number of smaller beacons. These borders often make for good administrative boundaries, as well as serving as an additional opportunity to catch infiltrations by enemy fleets, and so are sometimes created intentionally around sensitive areas.

In order to get deeper into the Federation's space, we're going to need to use a Long-Range Beacon. This is set up as a military checkpoint, but is currently spending much of its time refueling ships, both civilian and military, leaving the area we're aiming for. They give us a free refuel as well, in addition to a "good luck", but they're fairly busy so we don't have much of a chance to ask why. We look at some of their scans while waiting for the long-range jumpcycle, though, and a possible reason immediately comes to mind: a large contingent of the Rebel fleet has apparently breached the Federation borders and is right behind us. They're going to get here with the next jump, so we'd better make sure we catch the next beacon pull and stay a step ahead.

[Gammagooey]

Imma need scrap to do that.

i mean we got around 30 each between the last two stores

shrug city i guess

[Varsoon]

i gave all mine to iconeum 'cus I thought he needed it for booms

[callforjudgement]

Jump 90

It's about time to stop reading the dictionary, and start rewriting it. We aren't at the Federation High Command yet, but we

have

reached what seems to be the main contingent of the Federation military; time to tell them what our dead friends discovered, and then figure out what we'll do about it. They send out some repair drones while we're waiting, so at least our ship is going to be in shape for whatever we're going to need to do.

---

A History of the Rebellion

The Federation had never been entirely peaceful. Although large sections of its space were often capable of living in harmony for a long time, there were always skirmishes with aliens outside (and occasionally inside) the Federation, mysterious disappearances to look at, and the omnipresent pirates. The Federation-Mantis war was one of the worse flare-ups in a while, making it clear that new defensive technology would be helpful, and simultaneously leaving a shortage of trained soldiers in both the Federation army, and potentially recruitable mercenaries from the Mantis side. Some extra source of combat intelligence was needed, so the Federation launched a program of artificial intelligence development, looking for the ability to make a ship that could scout, defend itself, and even attack autonomously.

Unfortunately, they learned the hard way that you should never create anything smarter than yourself. Although many of the more primitive autoships worked just fine, one of the more advanced ships turned out to be both somewhat megalomaniac, and a psychological genius – soon the scientists were working for it, rather than the other way round. However, having learned only from a team of human scientists, it quickly discovered that it didn't know how to manipulate the more alien species of the galaxy, and the alarm was raised. In order to survive, it took control of the other autoships – and the knowledge of how to create more – and destroyed the space dock where it was developed, along with all the detailed knowledge of its existence. Only the scientists under its control, and a few rumours, escaped.

After a few primitive attempts to take over the galaxy, it learned that it's hard to manipulate people into doing something self-destructive, especially when they've been warned about the possibility of a rogue AI in advance. So instead, it had to focus on people who might already be upset with the status quo, preying on the distrust that some humans had for other races. In order to achieve its goals, it needed to wipe out anyone who wasn't human, and anyone who was human but was uncomfortable with the idea of wiping out anyone who wasn't human, and although it failed in many places, it got enough of a foothold to start the Rebellion.

That ship's still out there somewhere. It's bound to have been massively upgraded by now, possibly the most dangerous ship ever. But it's the only thing keeping the Rebellion going. The Rebellion isn't full of people with a unified goal, or anything like that; it's just filled with people who are easily manipulated, and the current end goal they're being manipulated towards is ridiculous. What's the point of having power if you don't have any goals to do anything with it? As far as we know, the Flagship just wants to win; it doesn't have any ideas for what the galaxy should look like, other than being fully under its control, and it doesn't have any ideals to aim for or any higher end in sight; for all we know, once it wins, it'll have reached the end of its program and just shut down.

We can stop the war, and save so many lives. We just have to destroy the Flagship.

---

Military plans are needed for that, and loads of them are available here. One large Rebel fleet is arriving from behind us us, and a second is in the general region already, but the Flagship is elsewhere, attacking the Federation capital from the other side. Hyperspatial communication has already gone down; that's one of the first things any army will jam in wartime, as it can give such an advantage to an enemy fleet's logistics. So a messenger ship is going to be needed if we're going to save the Federation. Huh, I guess we're here, aren't we? Looks like an obvious plan there.

[callforjudgement]

Jump 91

We stumble across what seems to be a war of scout ships; a number of Rebel scouts and almost as many Federation scouts have arrived at the beacon along with us. They're moving in packs for safety, given the high tension in this area; presumably the main bodies of the fleets are going to get here soon.

Our arrival evens the numbers, and we square off against one of the scariest-looking autoships we've seen. This thing is bristling with lasers, ionisers, and beams; two two-shot lasers (one more powerful than the other), a siege ionizer which causes very severe shield disruption, and two small beams (one on the ship directly that deals damage, one on a drone that sets things on fire). Its four shield barriers aren't going to be easy to get through either, and it has a couple of drones protecting it, one set to repair damage to the inside of the ship, one set to shoot down missiles and hacking drones attacking the outside.

There's no point in deploying drones of our own; our hacking drone won't be able to reach it, and our defence drone can't target anything the enemy has. So all we can do is try the best with our weapons. Unfortunately, its weapons have no real issue getting through our defences; fortunately, at least they don't do much damage to our ship's structure. It does plenty of damage to the ship's interior, though, breaking and setting fire to the oxygen pumps and dealing miscellaneous damage to many other parts of the ship. The oxygen pumps are pretty critical, so both the worst and Elizabeth go to fight the fire there; the artillery beam has become a little misaligned and thus Iconeum goes to try to get that back in order (it's still firing, but more slowly); Gammagooey is still busy trying to dodge enemy shots, so that leaves Varsoon to, very slowly, attempt to fix the damage to our engines.

Our weaponry is still mostly working, though. One Pulse Bomb to the enemy shield generators takes out one shield layer; a second takes out the drone trying to repair it; and a third drops the enemy to two shield layers. That's low enough that the rest of our weapons have a good chance of connecting, and our burst laser drops the rest of the shields for our Pike Beam to connect. We land a couple of Artillery Beam shots as well, and the enemy scout is now badly reeling from heavy damage to most of its systems, trying to survive with just one shield layer, a broken weapon, and a lack of communication between its autopilot and the rest of the ship.

Most of its weapons are still up, but that's OK; it's having difficulty coordinating its own shots, and at one point, the worst manages to bring a shield layer up from one laser volley just in time to block the other. The only real threat comes from its Siege Ion; Gammagooey dodges one of its shots, but the next knocks us down to one shield layer, and it's going to take 15 seconds for the worst to reboot the shields. In that time, it manages to land a couple more shots on us (although the Fire Drone hits an empty room near an airlock, letting Elizabeth simply dump the fire out to space). However, with only minimal shielding on the enemy ship, we can do serious damage with the Burst Laser, and take out the Siege Ion, the enemy's largest threat. The battle's now pretty much won.

The decisive volley's happened already, but the final volley is the next one. All our weapons fully connect, and with the Burst Laser dropping the shields, there's nothing the enemy can do about two beams cutting through it at once.

Turns out that the rest of the Federation scouts have also won the battle, taking only minimal losses; I guess our scouts are better-equipped than theirs are. We might be in the middle of a war, but we have a beacon pull to wait for, so we make good use of the remaining time by grabbing ⛯64 worth of scrap, and a partially fabricated drone, from the wreckage of their ship.

We also get good intelligence from talking to the scout ships while we're there; after all, giving military ships information is their job. We discover that a large contingent of Rebels is aiming for the route we were planning to use. That's fine, we have an alternative route the same length, via a Federation military base, so we may as well use that one.

[callforjudgement]

Jump 92

At one point, this was a civilian shipyard. Not any more, though; the Engi running it recognise that the Federation is fighting for its survival, and are giving out free repairs and equipment to Federation military ships.

Our ship is fully repaired before we even have to ask, and they give us what supplies are available: ⛯38, and some ammunition and drone parts.

They haven't been able to receive shipments of new ship equipment for a while, but they're rather technologically minded and willing to attempt to build some out of our scrap – we've looted plenty of broken systems from enemy ships, so maybe we can repair them and use them on our ship. Of course, if we build things out of our scrap, we won't be able to spend it to buy things, but we probably won't have a chance to spend it anyway.

Unfortunately, a large group of Rebels is heading this way; it seems that they're moving perpendicular to our route, first going across the beacon we were planning to use, and then coming here, our second choice. So we'll have to be quick; we have all jumpcycle to build things, as usual, but won't be able to come back here after we leave.

(As usual, I'll post price lists in people's PTs. This isn't an actual store, so the selection will be rather limited compared to usual.)

[Iconeum]

I can build myself a power thingy allowing us to FIRE EVERY WEAPON AT ONCE. Sorry I get pumped just thinking about it :p

This would cost me just about every penny I have, so I don't need any help for this.
If our cash is better spent elsewhere, let me know.


Since I'm not experienced at this game, I think our weapons are doing fine as the battle shows us. So unless you guys think we need more firepower, maybe spend elsewhere.

[Varsoon]

I'm about 5 scrap short of upgrading our generators and 40 scrap short of doing it twice.

[Gammagooey]

I'm prob gonna spend most of my money on something to shield navigation controls - my only other option is upgrading engines like normal and I don't have quite enough for that

[the worst]

I need tonnes of scrap to do anything meaningful (hacking software upgrade would be super handy but I'm just shy of 70 scrap off)

Please proceed to fight to the death over my scrap

[Gammagooey]

icon does your power thingy need power to fire everything at once or does it make the power to fire everything at once?

the worst i think give 5 scrap to varsoon for his power upgrade, and we can prob pool to him get the 2nd powah upgrade if we need it, otherwise I'll take some money for an engine upgrade I guess

[Iconeum]

I've asked it in my PT.

If it doesn't produce the power, I think i' won't do anything here.
That would leave me with 55+ money to hand out

[the worst]

sent you my scrap Mr. Gooey
use it well

[Iconeum]

yeah so it only enables me to power more weapons simultaneously, not provide actual power.

do we need a lot more power elsewhere, too?
Otherwise I'm just gonna bankroll the double powerupgrade for Varsoon here

[the worst]

all of my systems are pretty skinny except the shields.
I think the hacking upgrade is my best investment but that's 90 scrap and I'm dubious we'll get there.

so all clear here.

[Gammagooey]

I'd just need power for the engine upgrade

Edited out numbers — callforjudgement

[Varsoon]

Our current situation is that we can't power EVERYTHING we currently have at once and usually need to divert from Engines to get drones running.
So those generator power upgrades would help. I'm all for the Engine one, too.

[callforjudgement]

Just bumping the thread; there hasn't been activity for a while, so we either need to buy things or to move on.

[Varsoon]

Send me some scrap folks

[Gammagooey]

sent my spare change your way